The present invention relates to a mediation service method for collecting and selling pieces of selling price information. In particular, the invention relates to a mediation service method for collecting, for example, pieces of selling price information of a commodity with lower prices over a network in response to a request from a user, and supplying those pieces of selling price information to the user.
In recent years, auctions etc. using the Internet have come to be carried out actively, whereby an environment that enables trading of a commodity or the like between individuals, for example, at a low commission is now being established.
Among conventional techniques relating to the mediating service of selling price information is a shopping assisting apparatus disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (JP-A) No. H 10-63725. To assist a user in generating of a shopping memo based on sales advertisements of respective stores, this shopping assisting apparatus markets a commodity the user wants to buy. For this purpose, the shopping assisting apparatus obtain advertisements over a network and forms a table of those advertisements that enables easy search and thereby quickly supplies the user with price information or the like of each store. In this manner, the shopping assisting apparatus guides a user in determining a store that markets a commodity he wants to buy and that matches his requirements.
A commodity search system is known that is disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (JP-A) No. H 9-251468. In this commodity search system, a host computer that connects, via a network, users and commodity management systems provided in respective stores is supplied. The host computer receives pieces of commodity information from the commodity management systems automatically with prescribed timing, and processes the received pieces of commodity information into data that matches user needs, for example so as to arrange commodities on order of prices. When receiving a request from a user over the network, the host computer supplies the user the pieces of commodity information with data obtained by processing in accordance with the user's request.
In the above shopping assisting apparatus and the commodity search system, a mediation means such as a host computer is supplied. The mediation means receives information relating to commodities from stores, generates commodity information, convenient for a user, of a commodity the user wants to buy, and supplies the generated commodity information to the user. The commodity search system which relates to information collection, shows that information collection is performed automatically with prescribed timing.
However, the above configurations cannot provide a system capable of supplying commodity information to a user efficiently with a sophisticated mechanism that properly benefits both of stores that provide a commodity at lower prices and a user who wants to buy the commodity.